For the second consecutive quarter, Hutchinson Technology Inc. reported a net loss Tuesday. But the news wasn’t all bad.

Wayne Fortun, president and CEO of the company that makes suspension assemblies for disc drives, told investment analysts that he’s encouraged by development in the company’s disk drive components and biomeasurement divisions.

“In our disk drive components division, we estimate we gained share in the overall market and as a result, we delivered a sequential increase in net sales,“ Fortun said during a conference call.

Fortun said that growth came from “serving our customer better than our competitors, designing innovative products that help customers meet their cost and performance challenges, and consistently delivering industry-leading quality at a competitive price.”

In the end, the company reported reported net sales of $150.4 million for its fiscal third quarter ending June 29, up 5 percent compared with $143.8 million in the preceding quarter. In the fiscal 2007 third quarter, net sales totaled $156.7 million.

Meanwhile, the company’s biomeasurement division, which manufactures and sells a medical device that noninvasively reads oxygen levels in tissue, is gaining new interest from hospitals in the U.S. and Europe.
Rick Penn, president of the biomeasurement division, said the company continues to add hospitals to its customer base for its InSpectra StO2 system. And the number of prospective customers engaged in evaluation of the device is also growing, Penn added.

For the full story, see the Leader's July 31 print edition.

(Doug Hanneman is editor of the Hutchinson Leader. He may be reached at hanneman@hutchinsonleader.com [2])